Transaction data insights help payment cards reach “top of wallet” status 

In card issuing, as in hiking, there is often more than one way to the top.

But there are signposted trails for good reason.

Cardholders, like hikers, generally set out on their customer journey from a base point and then follow a trail. At any point on the hike, one of two things happens: the cardholder either continues to follow the trail as planned, or they veer off.

Card issuers refer to the start of the climb as ”early month on book” (EMOB), which covers a cardholder’s first 90 days. The term ”customer retention” then refers to the inherent challenges on the way up and how to prevent any veering off.

If a card is to reach “top of wallet” status, the cardholder needs to keep transacting by staying on trail. But card issuers have often struggled to balance both their EMOB and customer retention strategies. Sometimes, they are not aware of any veering until it is too late, and the profitability of the card portfolio is already eroded..

So how can card issuers engage cardholders and inspire the loyalty that keeps them transacting?

The answer: Data-driven insights from transactions.

In theory, card issuers have access to a wealth of transaction data insights that go right down to the level of the primary account number (PAN) associated with each individual card. But the sheer scope of data insights to draw from can be overwhelming despite being limited to an issuer’s own walls.

Still, this abundance of data insights can be managed with the right tools — namely those that conduct detailed analyses of spending patterns once transactions are made. The concomitant scarcity of data insights may be addressed by the incorporation of anonymized and aggregated payment network data that extends beyond transactions associated with individual issuers.

Equipped accordingly, a spend analysis can then look at purchase patterns across card type, merchant category, time and location to ask questions in areas like the following:

• Engagement variation: Do cardholders who spend across a variety of retail categories engage more than cardholders who stay within specific categories? Understanding the distribution of cardholders by breadth of spend is a starting point to graduating cardholders to more frequent spend across industries.

• Spending events: Do cardholders who qualified for a certain level of promotional offer when opening an account engage more than cardholders who did not qualify at the same level?

• Retail categories: Do cardholders who purchase certain items appreciate promotions in a less-frequent retail category more or less than other cardholders?

The answers should enable card issuers to best prepare cardholders for their customer journeys that follow.

Remaining “top of wallet” is no longer about where a card sits — it’s about digital presence. Close to nine in 10 consumers in both the U.S. and Europe report having made some form of digital payment in 2024 — and that figure is poised to grow.1 To encourage early cardholder spending early, issuers must simplify digital payment methods, such as digital wallet, in-app and in-store payments. They can promote adoption by providing clear instructions and emphasizing the enhanced security of tokenization — a technology that replaces sensitive payment data insights with one-time digital identifiers.

An old business axiom states that attracting a new customer costs more than retaining an existing customer. Easy account switching is now flipping that axiom on its head for card issuers. 

The factors that make it easy to sign up to one issuer also make it equally easy to switch to another. What results is silent attrition. The silence reflects the lull in activity despite no formal account closure. Still, issuers often prioritize the acquisition of new cardholders at the expense of taking the necessary steps to prevent attrition. So how can they create a retention strategy to reengage at-risk cardholders?

Early prevention is the best way to quickly reorient any wanderers. Still, issuers cannot realistically sustain highly competitive, sometimes loss-leading, EMOB promotional offers forever. To further refine their engagement strategies, issuers must also acquire a deeper understanding of cardholder spending trends over time and personalize accordingly. 60% of customers expect card features and benefits to be tailored to their unique needs. Data-driven insights can help brands deliver contextually relevant promotions and smarter, high-impact messaging to the right cardholders.

• The factors that make it easy to sign up to one issuer also make it equally easy to switch to another

Once a cardholder has demonstrated their purchasing behavior over the EMOB period, customer segmentation can assign them to various groups based on common purchasing traits. These groupings can then accommodate more tailored questions than were possible during the EMOB period. For example:

• Engagement variation: What tailored messaging will most appeal to a cardholder to remind them of the benefits associated with their card?

• Spending events: What tailored promotion will appeal to a cardholder based on their response, or lack of response, to an earlier less-tailored promotion?

• Merchant categories: Which tailored offers in specific merchant categories will best encourage a cardholder to make recurring payments that will increase habitual card use?

The answers enable issuers to craft a more personalized cardholder journey that inspires loyalty, boosts incremental value and reduces reliance on last-ditch, “win back” appeals to those who are deliberately going off trail rather than straying. The result? Cardholders stay engaged and on track — with issuers guiding them to the top.

For all their data-informed analytical insight, the recommendations for EMOB and customer retention are not guaranteed to be effective. They are at best well-founded hypotheses to apply strategically.

In today’s dynamic financial landscape, institutions must continuously adapt to evolving customer behaviors and economic conditions. One powerful way to do this is through a Test & Learn approach — a methodology that blends controlled experimentation with macroeconomic insights to validate strategies before full-scale deployment. Rather than relying on assumptions or broad market trends, financial institutions can use Test & Learn ® to run precise experiments — such as testing new onboarding flows, promotional offers or digital wallet incentives — on a subset of cardholders. 

These experiments reveal what truly works, helping teams fine-tune their efforts to keep customers engaged and prevent them from drifting away from their intended financial journey. They also ensure that cardholders who reach the top do not just come right back down again.